In politics, big tents are a necessity

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“Can't anybody here play this game?” That's what Casey Stengel, the manager of the 1962 New York Mets, supposedly asked in exasperation upon witnessing the spectacular incompetence his team demonstrated on the field. As the midterm elections approach in November, it's a question both major political parties would do well to ask themselves.

Electoral politics is a game of addition. Power can only be obtained and wielded by winning more people over to your side than your opponents do. It is, in this sense, the polar opposite of that other field of human endeavor that engenders a similar depth of conviction: religion.

Faith aspires to reveal truth – and truth is not determined by majority vote. In religious matters, it's thus reasonable to favor a smaller church absolutely committed to specific doctrine over a larger one with a congregation heterodox to the point of incoherence.

That same emphasis on purity, however, is a recipe for disaster in politics. As an example, consider the now-famous pronouncement by then-Sen. Jim DeMint in 2010, when the South Carolina Republican declared he'd rather have 40 solid conservatives in the U.S. Senate than 60 moderate Republicans. As a rallying cry for his party's base, it was perhaps effective. As a practical matter, it was just shy of deranged.

A Senate of 40 rock-ribbed conservatives would be a Senate where the other 60 members busied themselves moving the country leftward – especially with the evisceration of the filibuster that has taken place since DeMint's infamous sound bite. In politics, a principled loss is a loss all the same.

In recent years, it's been fashionable to make this point in regard to the elections that Republicans have lost as a result of nominating candidates too far right for an otherwise persuadable electorate. That's what happened in Senate races in Colorado, Delaware and Nevada in 2010, and in Indiana and Missouri in 2012.

The criticism is apt, but it overlooks the places where conservatives reaped benefits by tilting to the right. In states like Florida (Marco Rubio), Kentucky (Rand Paul), Texas (Ted Cruz) and Utah (Mike Lee), the GOP
succeeded by being more conservative.

Taken as a whole then, we have to consider this strategy a wash, right? Not exactly.

The key to success for Tea Party-style candidates was running in states that already possessed a conservative inclination. Utah, Texas and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Kentucky were already fairly reliable red states. Florida doesn't quite fit that pattern, but Rubio is also not the same kind of flame-thrower as Lee, Cruz or Paul.

The states where more conservative candidates lost, by contrast, were all either a moderate purple or a liberal blue. Tip O'Neil's axiom still holds: “All politics is local.” Play to the home crowd or get to work on your concession speech.

In the past decade, Democrats understood that dynamic. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Rahm Emanuel's tenure as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (which yielded major Democratic gains in 2006) was recruiting candidates uniquely attuned to their constituencies. Emanuel knew that Democrats couldn't hope to elect candidates from parts of the Midwest or the South if they were held captive by elite liberal attitudes on issues like abortion or gun control, neither of which travel well in the heartland.

A similar dynamic was at work in Barack Obama's 2008 presidential bid. By running a content-free campaign that focused overwhelmingly on his personality, Obama was able to pose as all things to all people – it was dishonest, but it was good politics.

What ought to trouble Democrats in 2014 is how severely that appeal has contracted. After a half-decade in office, Obama is no longer a mystery. Government control of health care, a big Keynesian stimulus, fanciful forays into alternative energy – there's not much on the president's agenda for you unless you share his doctrinaire liberalism.

The big tent has collapsed. In a game based on addition, that's a formula for subtraction – and big losses come November.

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